Christianity

P 2180 Time for some reality.

/ DVH

Good morning. It is 4.00am at my house and the one great thing about this time, is that it is incredibly quiet. Unfortunately I am awake at this hour because of my concern for my family. Worry and despair jumped all over me at 3.00am and I’ve spent the last hour working on practicing what I preach!  Plus I also prayed for you guys. I don’t know your name and you don’t know mine, but I know that things in your part of the world aren’t always great. Some of you are facing incredibly hard times and my prayer for you today is that ‘the Lord would be with you in trouble … because you know His Name.’ Psalm 91:14-15

One of the things I am still learning about the Lord is that He is much too kind to leave us in the kind of misery that can grab us by the throat and cause us untold pain. However, at this dumb hour, I can also tell you that it gets much harder to roll your cares off onto Him! 🙄 I had to insist, then insist some more! So I climbed out of bed, trying not to disturb my lovely hubby – who has just had nasty surgery on his hand, and he needs his sleep – and I came upstairs to talk to you about the things in our lives that don’t seem to prayerfully resolve themselves easily. And some of those things include other people’s choices.

There are countless books that tell us how to pray, where to pray, how to cope, or how to overcome, but the truth is – when you look at everything carefully – WE will have to use our own faith. No-one else can roll my cares off my heart except ME. And I will probably have to kill off my flesh, yet again, to do it. This means that some days I can try to sit in the dirt and pout, and complain, and hope that Almighty God will be impressed by my sadness enough to change my circumstances!

And praise Him and His generosity, He does – many times. But the Lord doesn’t always help me by instantly changing things – most of the time He helps me by changing my attitude! 😶 Which means that somewhere in my thinking I will have to stop feeling entitled to a better, happier life and thank Him for the life I already have! However, I always need to start with the fact that He died for me, otherwise I can get stuck in the whole entitlement thing.

Years ago, my generation was taught that the answers to prayer relied upon US. If we had enough faith, and a right attitude, bingo bongo all would be well. But prayer is by nature, the acknowledgement that I cannot fix something. Instead I am reaching out to SomeOne bigger, wiser and more loving than I am. Which means I will have to take a risk – and a step of faith … and trust that this incredible Person hopefully wants the same answer I do! I’ve been a Christian for a long time. So I have learnt that Jesus doesn’t always want the same answer we do – HE WANTS MORE than I ever hoped or dreamed and that can take a whole lifetime and more to fulfil. But sometimes those answers won’t look like the answer to my passionate emotion- filled prayers. I will need His eyes to understand what He is doing. Read the book.

In many of our churches we have tried so hard to present a positive image. We want to look happy, fulfilled and successful in our marriages, fellowships, friendships, homes, work places, and schools. We want to show the world that Jesus is the Answer to everything. So much so, we have forgotten that we are are fallible human beings who can still make mistakes. Awful ones. I’ve made my share – and some!  Many of us have worn plastic fake smiles for so long we are almost fully automated. That fake is killing us. Christianity is not a fairy tale, and following Jesus does not always mean we will have a happy ending in this life. Just look at the apostles and what happened to them. 

So today I am writing this to say to you that if your prayer life, or bible study, or Christian faith is NOT ALL THAT – be of good cheer. Our God is bigger than our failures. Jesus is the One Who is real, and sadly you and I are sometimes very poor reflections of His reality. But thank God, He does not rely upon our efforts. Our God did all the work for us – He knows we are not capable of fixing ourselves. We will always need a Saviour, and a Redeemer in this life. And if Jesus is not Who He says He is, then we are all sunk, and we should be pitied. 

Paul said something like that once in I Corinthians 15:19 & 20a.  “If our hope in Christ is good for this life only and no more, then we deserve more pity than anyone else in all the world. But the truth is that Christ has been raised from death,…”  Bye. 👋🏻

P 2169 What fills your mind?

/ DVH

Colossians 3:1-3 “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, WHERE CHRIST IS, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you DIED – (as in … you and I are dead, all dead!) – and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” Did you know that spiritually speaking we do not have to feel dead to BE dead?

When we live our every day lives using our faith, then Christ becomes our life. (V4) We all know that the stuff in V5 is bad – that’s obvious …“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” BUT… Vs8-10 are just as important. “But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.  Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” 

Here’s a nasty little thought – pretending to be something, or someone we are not to fit in, is lying. We cannot pretend our way out of something that is meant to be taken off!  Today, there are times we say to our kids, “everybody gets angry, it’s OK,” but here we are told to get rid of it along with greed, lust and bad language. BTW being renewed doesn’t sound like a part-time job to me. Instead it sounds like a continuous on-going activity. Just saying is all …😶

We are meant to take off this world’s ways and put on His, using our faith, over and over again. We read the book and repent and then act on what we’ve read. Choice after choice after choice. And the harder each choice is, the bigger the opportunity to strengthen and enlarge this new life we walking are into! However, we can get so tied up with avoidance, that we forget we have brand new clothes we can wear. It would be tragic to simply focus on the clothes we are throwing off, instead of what He has given to us to put on. In order to wear these new clothes we should at least know what they look like! 

I think most of us are aware of the stuff we need to avoid, but the pressures and difficulties of this life shove and press in on us moment by moment. Our enemy is relentless in his desire to turn our thoughts away from worshipping Jesus with our bodies, by being obedient to His will, using our faith. The Holy Spirit inside us wants us to win. He wants us to ‘taste and see’ that the Lord is good! As we go along, our dedication to obedience helps us with changing our hearts, so then our focus is on going after His kingdom – not on this world’s and its ways. This process may be difficult initially, but it quickly and progressively becomes the way we live.

Part of the problem in Christianity today is that we have been sitting in this world’s saucepan full of water too long and we haven’t noticed the heat underneath the pan being turned up. Every single pressure imaginable is on us and our kids. You can’t go anywhere without being ear and eye-assaulted! 

This why God’s clothes matter. Our natural response to the filthy stuff around us is revulsion, but we have to press on past our natural revulsion into His LOVE. We love the sinner and hate the sin. But we don’t have to love how some people choose to live. However, the more we wear His clothes and learn to see this world through His eyes, the more we will have compassion on those whose choices have been made without knowledge of a better way. There is a liar loose amongst us – mankind is in the grip of so many massive deceptions, and most people are like the bible says: “lambs to the slaughter.” 

But the Lord Jesus’ eyes are currently full of compassion for these lost ones marked for death. The time for judgment is not here yet, even though it is rushing at this world like a freight train. Right now we need to snatch people from the place where they have been mesmerised by evil, and show them, in person, what goodness looks like! To do that we will need His glory wherever we go. We will have to be clothed in it. Our time is no longer our own. It is time to deliberately change our minds by filling them with His thoughts and change our minds as well as our clothes – one choice at a time. 👋🏻

P 2156 Our children belong to all of us.

/ DVH

The Western world has very firm ideas about how to raise kids. No smacking or corporal punishment of any kind. You are supposed to reason with them, or maybe bargain with them, and/or bribe them. Well that’s not in my bible! And it could be why we have teenagers rampaging about, doing things that are not good for the community or themselves. Many kids are being left alone daily by their parents in favour of a bigger TV, car or house. Kids need love and attention, first. 

The first point I want to make today is this: nobody’s flesh is reasonable. Even children are little bags of ‘gimme gimme, I want want … ’ We are the adults, we need to carefully choose what is actually good for them. Meanwhile despite public opinion, kids are not basically good – left to their own devices they can create havoc. While I agree that we should not thump the daylights out of a child to govern its behaviour – because when you do that you introduce fear – we definitely need to do much better than we’ve been doing. Toothless warnings don’t work. If we don’t discipline our children then rebellion takes over. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline [correction administered with godly wisdom and lovingkindness] will remove it far from him.”  Proverbs 22:15. 

My best advice is first of all, asap, introduce kids to Jesus. We desperately need people prepared to dedicate their lives to raising the next generation for the Lord – people who are called by God, to witness to and share with kids. And then we must deliberately DISCIPLE them. Teach them daily how to follow Him. It can be helpful to remember that you are teaching individual children. Blanket statements are not as effective – the Lord Jesus sees individuals so we should too. He knows their names! When you have a bunch of kids together you will quickly find none of them are the exactly same. Love the kid in front of you like it is the only one. And BTW, don’t typecast them either. Nobody is all one thing.

Back when I was an active parent, I learnt that some children need strong discipline, and others barely need a feather… plus a whole range of stuff in between. So you really do need to know what is what, before you sail forth and do them harm! Discern the child’s nature as well as the reason for its behaviour. Back to my point – our children belong to all of us – this world around us will not profit if we only care about OUR kids. There are too many orphan-spirited kids in our world today. Children get into mischief and trouble without supervision. We are so busy saving the whales, etc. we’ve forgotten, first of all! –  We need to save our children! They won’t magically arrive as mature adults – they need direction and supervision.

I want to share a story from my own history. When my son was much younger, he used to play with a kid who lived up the road. That kid was a bit of a bully. One day this boy picked up a big lump of concrete and threw it at my son’s head and hit him on the temple. There was blood everywhere … I calmed my boy down and fixed his head, then, my temper took my feet out of the front door. I’m pretty sure I was NOT thinking very Christian thoughts at the time … I imagine I left my Christianity in the sock drawer! I was so furious, I marched up the street and banged on the front door of the other boy’s house. 

This boy’s father was often home and the man was a huge fellow.  Sadly, I can’t tell you why he was home – I didn’t know them well enough. At the time I was shaking like a leaf with anger … as well as quite a bit of fear chucked in. However, when he opened the door I still shouted at him. I told him to control his son or else … I have no idea what I was going to do about it if he didn’t BTW! The guy just kept laughing at me and slurping his beer – I truly don’t think I had much of an impact on him at all. However, he must have told his son to stop playing with mine and there were no further incidents. 

Recently, I’ve begun to realise that when you are under pressure, what is really INSIDE you – comes OUT. And the only kid I cared about that day was mine! At the time I was not even remotely concerned about the poor kid who had a beer-in-his-hand-father-drinking-away-at-two-o’clock-in-afternoon!  I’ve repented, but I don’t ever really remember even apologising to the guy nor did I speak again to that boy. I just sort-of kind-of avoided them after that. I let my embarrassment and pride win.

My point is this, these kids are the future, and it is unrealistic to label badly behaved kids as: ”Somebody else’s problem,” like somehow we have no part in them. Undeserved kindness has a profound influence on kids, I know it did on me when I was young – I can actually remember the names of people who were kind to me. Punishment may become necessary, but it needs to be tempered with wisdom and mercy. Psalms 127:3 says: “Children are God’s love-gift; they are heaven’s generous reward.” Matthew 18:10:“Be careful that you not corrupt one of these little ones. For I can assure you that in heaven each of their guardian angels always see the face of My heavenly Father.” Mark 9:36&37 “Then He had a child come and stand among them. He wrapped the child in His arms and said to them.“Whoever welcomes a little child in My Name welcomes Me.”

I have learnt the hard way that when things get difficult we can easily forget what we believe – in favour of simply taking care of our own. We all live on the same planet and we need to remember that today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. This world’s children belong to us all.  We simply must care enough to help them find their true selves in Christ. 👋🏻

P 2154 Time to step up our training.

/ DVH

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18). When the bible says we are being transformed, that means right here, right now. However, more responsibility in this new life of ours, can mean we will face even more opposition … that’s also something that we need remember as we go along. BUT the Lord is way too kind to let us move from one glory into the next without Him personally preparing us. HE WANTS US TO WIN. Our God is really great at resistance training! 🤣

If you feel you have been called to do this or that, or whatever;  then you need to know that there will be opposition facing you. The upside is that the Lord knows you can go through whatever it is. Jesus will walk us each step of the way, just like He did for Peter when he was walking on the water. Christianity is not for the faint-hearted. However, we must remember, that it is always filled to overflowing with His kindness, mercy, love and grace for the timid, inept and weak. Keep praying for eyes to see these things! Our God is so incredible. Stretching our faith means developing spiritual muscles. If you read the book carefully, you will see that happening in so many lives in the bible.

Philippians 2: 3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”Now there is a great verse to remember. I urge anyone to exercise great caution when talking about the things the Lord has said about your future. Our opponent knows very little about us, unless we open our big mouths and tell him – he’s not omniscient or omnipresent like our Father. You and I must learn to strengthen our feeble knees and wobbly hands by fighting his opposition daily – through the immediate situations we face, and how we decide to face them. God trains us for this war through these day to day seemingly ordinary difficult situations.

He allows these things every day, so we can willingly learn to choose His ways – for His sake. For things like humility, preferring others, speaking well of others as well as living our lives for His Body’s sake. Our God will not let us move on to what comes next, without learning these lessons. So, sadly, some people go round and round like an eddy in a little pool, because they have not yet learnt what they need to know so they are unprepared for what comes next. That would be me with my hand up BTW. I’ve gone round and round so many times I got giddy. 😵‍💫 Then I asked Him why I was stuck … and He told me!  We prepare for WAR by fighting our daily battles.

It took me a while to understand that I actually was hobbling myself by refusing to learn His ways. We have such a good good Father. Remember He will never send us out unprepared. He also does not make a private strategise the next move on the battlefield – that task belongs to a general – that’s why we need leaders. My advice? Learn to be happy where you are … let Him arrange what comes next. Do what you can, and then turn it all over to Him and leave it there. We cannot afford to ignore any tests He sends us. Each one is building a muscle we will need when we step into what He has for us NEXT.  

Jesus came here to serve us, and when we follow Him we will always lovingly serve others. The most fun you will ever have, trust me, is when you are led to serve someone who hates you – and go and you do whatever the Lord tells you to do, and it messes with their mind. I’ve seen people ‘lost at sea,’  literally, because they do not have a pocket to put my kindness toward them in. It’s hilarious. BTW you don’t do these things as revenge, you are just following the Leader. But it still can be a tad funny!

Our God loves oxymorons. These are the things in the bible that are put together in a harmonious way, but they are actually in direct opposition to one another. So he sends a coward to fight without number, and a hater to save a particularly hated city. Plus He brings His Only precious pure Son through the lineage of a couple of prostitutes. He tells us clearly in the book, that when we are weak then the potential exists for Him to be strong IN us etc. Jesus even told us we are blessed when we mourn! So when God tells us to rejoice always you can be pretty darn sure that this life is going to give us opportunities to have that particular mindset challenged. Nothing is wasted. Opportunities will only be wasted if we don’t rely upon His word.

The bible is a road map to His heart, and His Ways. We cannot afford to lean on our own understanding, instead we need to faithfully, and progressively learn to know and lean on HIS. But, because His Ways are higher than ours, they won’t always seem fantastic, instantly, to us! There is so much more ahead of us, if we don’t waste the life we have feathering our own nests! Instead we need to progressively learn how to live for His kingdom and put that first. Training is hard. It means putting down what I want, and doing something I don’t want to do – especially not repeatedly! The benefit of this, is that as we learn His ways, we are changed, and then His Ways not only make sense, they become extremely beautiful to us.  Praise the Lord! 😂

P 2153 The Lord says tough stuff.

/ DVH

John 20:24-27 “…Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, My servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves Me. “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.”

Jesus said a whole lot of tough stuff that needs our immediate attention. After all. so many people alive today do not know Him – and they know nothing of His Salvation plan for mankind. And WE, you and I, are the ones who need to tell them. Here’s a couple more similar verses: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24. That cross can be our circumstances, or even a difficult person. Good time to stop and think… Mo-ving on again… “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” John 3:36. 

You probably never heard anyone preach on those scriptures lately. They definitely wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice for verses to comfort us! At first glance they don’t seem very people friendly. But our faith is not a soft faith – it is an all inclusive, who-so-ever-will, may-come faith, which also means everybody is meant to  participate. Jesus Christ set the high standard we all must follow and He showed us by His example, that we must die, take up our cross, and follow Him. Hmmm… today’s blog is not much of a cheery one!

The Lord never ever spoke frivolously about death, He took that matter seriously. But, He also saw death as a doorway through to something bigger. I’m not sure we comprehend that completely until we have to face it for ourselves, or someone we love dearly, dies. This means we don’t talk about the backbone of our faith much … except perhaps at funerals. In all the years I have been a Christian I don’t think I have heard all that many sermons about this kind of exceptionally serious subject. We mainly talk about sin, repentance,  ministries, God’s love, benefits, and spiritual gifts. The stuff we GET, not the stuff we GIVE UP.

I personally think sin actually starts here, with what Jesus said about the way we live our lives. We are either all IN, or we are all OUT, but we must be learning, daily, to count the cost. In truth there are no part-time Christians in the bible, and there is no room for paddling in the shallows. I believe we have divided Christianity into two separate categories in the Western world – being born again, and … hopefully, one day, ev-en-tu-ally ….getting around to … dying daily. But … maybe not too quickly!

Basically, I think Christians see this dying daily stuff as an optional extra. And it isn’t. Jesus didn’t see this subject that way … read the book! Paul had quite a bit to say about it as well. It seems to me that sometimes we try to get away with as much as we ‘legally’ can, and then eventually we have to repent to ‘fix things’. Plus we make excuses about not having any power to change … so we can’t help it. Like the cross Jesus died on was devoid of power! Having said all that, there are a select few people that I know personally, who really do actively try to follow the Lord’s teachings. And boy do they have a hard time of it!  Most of their problems come from the paddlers at the edge of the pool, throwing rocks at them.

Let’s pretend for a minute. Let’s pretend that we ALL live to die daily, simply because the Lord told us to do it.  Let’s imagine that we have to practice these skills in order to understand what Grace and faith really are. I think that if all of us live the way Jesus did, following His instructions, satan is going to be a whole lot busier than he is when we treat these scriptures as optional extras. We belong to the majority. Jesus and me are a majority. So why don’t we live like we are the majority? Um … we like our own way too much? 

Like I said, this blog is not cheery or comforting unless you have dealt with, or are dealing with your old life minute by minute, day by day. If that is the case then right about now, you are nodding your head at what you are reading! The problem we have created, is that we tell people they must be born again … and we omit to tell them that this new free life Christ died to give us, actually has a cost. The cost is our old life for His new life. Now, I could list all the benefits of this new life in Christ here today, but Christianity seems to be pretty good at finding the benefits all by itself. It’s the cost we get stuck on.

There is only one way to heaven. The blood of Jesus. Now, we exchange our old life for His and live for Him. Ya might want to think on that while you are earning your daily bread … which actually comes from Him! That’s tough stuff. 👋🏻

P 2150 Shame is no longer welcome in our lives.

/ DVH

Some of my very favourite people on this planet are perfectionists. Oh boy! That kind of trait will dig a hole and bury you in it!  Unfortunately, when you can’t meet your own inner standards, shame can be a constant companion. Shame damages the recipient and accomplishes nothing, spiritually speaking, because it has its roots in fear of failure. Actively absorbing perfect love will chuck all sorts of fear out of the window!

Shame also makes you disappointed and angry at others, because many other people give up their efforts to change, w-a-y too quickly, and people driven by shame often struggle with making comparisons. We are adults, and we are responsible for our own actions and choices, so we need to watch out for shame, resentment, anger, fear, pride etc. before they grow into trees with bitter roots. Meanwhile, any perfectionists I know are always pushing themselves to meet some sort of imaginary impossible target, and wondering why they feel exhausted every day of the week.

Sadly they don’t make any room for their own weaknesses and humanity, and they end up feeling disappointed with themselves, out of sorts, and wondering where their God-declared peace went! They can get cranky at this person or that system. They are the kind of people who would easily score 100% on a test and wonder why they didn’t get 110%! 😱 They are most probably fans of Superman because he can do anything! Yet the very thing that pushes them on, is also their kryptonite.  And that is  … shame. The shame that assails them with ‘not good enough.’

This trait is one of the larger blights on Christianity because in the past the church has used – and sometimes even still uses – shame, to change people’s behaviour. Transformation comes from renewing our minds, and staying in a close relationship to the Lord – not from hating yourself – that BTW is the other guy. 

Perfectionists like to accentuate perceived faults and ignore the normality of humanity’s weaknesses. These people may be tough on you – but, believe me, they are even tougher on themselves! You will never feel completely satisfied with anything when you walk with shame. It can feel like self defence when you attack others for no reason. I’ve read a little bit on this subject over the years, and I found that people who allow shame to push them around can have a form of inverted pride. That’s a big clue with dealing with this issue. You can repent of pride, inverted or not! Pride, BTW, refuses to accept reality, which is we are all sinners saved by His GRACE. The only Person who is totally right is Christ and He gave us His rightness. (Or righteousness) We live there by faith.

We can get rid of those things that mess with our mind like these things do – stuff that easily weighs us down – (please note the word easily). We do that at the foot of the cross. At the cross Jesus bore all our sins, burdens, shame, hypocrisy, spite, pride and anger … just to mention a few things! The point is to off-load them there and leave them there, then exercise your faith that what He said He did He did. And then, we REPENT – we cannot leave that bit out – so with His help and guidance, we choose to challenge and change our behaviour.

So today I have a couple of diagnostic questions. If you were to look at Jesus what would you see? Would you see SomeOne Who did everything perfectly and set a standard you cannot possibly attain … OR …

… would you see the CROSS first? Ya might want to selah on that for a couple of months or so. 🧐

The Lord’s death took care of our weaknesses and infirmities, and I believe that shame etc. is both a weakness, and an infirmity.  “Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].” Isaiah 53:4. So please don’t be ignorant when you look at the cross! Understanding what happened there will absolutely change your life. An exchange was made. Our sin for His right standing in the Father’s eyes – it would be a shame if we knew that but never lived it out. Please excuse my terrible pun!

Jesus took shame and everything else to the cross by hanging there naked, subject to everyone’s inappropriate, self-serving lies and abuse. People misunderstood His very motivation. They attributed evil things to His Godly, passionate, unselfish act. He finished the job that day, so we don’t have to carry shame for our past, or even what we did yesterday – or who we were before we met Him. Today is a brand new day and His mercies are new every single morning. We have no excuse however, for not seeking and pursuing change, because what Christ did made permanent, life-time changes freely available for all of us. We were reborn to be transformed into His likeness.

When Father God sees us now, He sees us IN Christ, covered with the Lord Jesus’ blood. Our part in this new life is to realise Jesus’ blood was costly to the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Sin, shame, weaknesses are not stagnant things, they grow like fungus and mould. So let the light and fresh wind of the Holy Spirit blow across your mind, will, and emotions, every single day!  On purpose. Let Him stop you in the middle of a sentence if that sentence is not helpful to your new life in Christ. We will stagnate spiritually if we do not pay attention to what is happening inside us. That’s where things like shame grab a foothold. 

You and I have no excuse for staying in the past, or letting it control us, and we have no excuse whatsoever for allowing the past to dominate the present. We have a Saviour Who conquered all the stuff that seeks to trip us up. We simply must watch where we put our feet and give our enemy nothing to stand on – like Jesus did!. 👋🏻

P 2104 Our faith needs to be real-er today, than this world around us.

/ DVH

And this world often gets …right up in our faces. I have noticed, in my own life, that one thing piles upon another and yet another until I feel swamped.. It becomes easy to despair. But I’m  learning, to live my life asking for His help.. The only way is to …“Let the peace of God be my umpire.“  What does that mean? It means I deliberately put any problem to one side in my mind, and pray my all-time favourite prayer… “help, help!”  I don’t even pray about what I think the answer might be – instead I just WAIT. I wait for peace inside me. I wait for my ideas and desperation to subside, then I simply breathe and focus on Him.

I have already resolved in my heart any internal issues about what I think I need, because I don’t want to live this life independently. I need Him more than anyone or anything else. This life does not make sense without HIM. I have found independence is overrated, it is what shoots my faith in the foot – the safest place for any difficulty to be, is in His hands. Sad to say sometimes it is easier to flail around looking for immediate relief – but I have learnt that immediate relief from pain and problems feels good, temporarily, but it doesn’t always accomplish the purposes of God. His purpose is to transform our lives and save this world. When we look at what we want, we need to ask ourselves, “Where will that fit into His greater plan?”

In the Old Testament there is an illustration that really spoke to me – it is in Exodus 21:5 – “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free, then his master is to bring him before the judges, And he shall take him to the door or doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he shall serve his master for life…”’ This excerpt is talking about a servant voluntarily becoming a love-slave. It is part of the law handed down by Moses from God – remember, the law is a good thing, Jesus said so. He didn’t come to change any of it – He came to fulfil it – and He did. Somebody needed to be punished for our disobedience and sin and He volunteered. Jesus became our offering before the Father, forever.

Back to my verse in Exodus 21:5. In those days, like I said, a servant who truly loved their master could choose to remain a slave. This was a lifetime thing, the master put the slave’s ear against a doorpost and put an awl through his earlobe – the awl left a big hole in his lobe that never went away. Choice seems important to human beings, and God is so kind to us, He will not make us do anything. However, we can choose to become His love-slave… And no, He won’t pierce our ears! Fashion already does that!! 😂

Because our choices are so powerful, at any time we can live out our Christian lives in lip-service –  instead of faithful, devoted service to the King. Lip-service is about living this life the way we want to. Being a love-slave is about putting the Holy Spirit in charge and then actively reading the bible looking for things to do, and repenting about the things we don’t. Transformation becomes our way of life. We understand that difficulties are the vehicles that God uses to strengthen our loyalty to Him. Faithful service is not simply doing the things that are convenient to us, it is laying down our lives, minute by minute, like Christ did, to do the Father’s will.

A love-slave lives to do his master’s will. He is so devoted to the master, that whatever his master wants becomes that person’s first priority. Christianity is not only about reading the bible, praying, and serving the church – Christianity is about becoming a loving, living illustration of that bible to everyone around us. To do that, His book has to operate on our hearts, thoughts and actions with our permission and co- operation. 

Remember, co-operation means the Holy Spirit and I do this together. It means I yield whatever I want, or the things that suit me, to live this life He gave me, however He wants. PS: personally, I don’t always like it when the Holy Spirit brings up something that needs to be changed in my actions or reactions  – but afterward… I LOVE IT. He knows how to live my life wa-a-y better than I do! And I adore watching what Jesus does with my teeny, tiny little LIFE/LUNCH – I’ve seen Him ‘feed’ lots of people on the smallest effort from me.

Jesus spoke to some ordinary men He met, men who didn’t even know Him. They became His disciples. He said: ‘Come and follow Me.’Right now, the Holy Spirit is saying that to every single Christian on this planet. He knows the WAY we should go! Just give up your own plans for your life and learn to follow Him. This is how our faith becomes REAL. 👋🏻

P 2099 Christianity is about giving

/ DVH

Giving to the homeless poor has diminished here in our city, as everyone around us is facing difficult times. However, it will not be a very Merry Christmas in a lot of homes of all shapes and sizes all over our world this year. Not to mention those people in other countries who are suffering far worse than we can even imagine. Think about having Christmas in the dead of winter, with no heating, no food, no help coming, and covid banging on your door. It is time to do more than pray for them.

I am delighted to say, our little home church is filled with people with such generous hearts, despite their own personal needs. I think generosity and spirituality go together! We started a campaign in November this year to collect canned, and packaged goods as well as toiletries, and little gifts, and ended up with three huge bags/boxes of stuff. Here is my dear hubby’s report of what happened when he went out to give these things away.

“Everyone I spoke with was incredibly grateful for any help at all. The tireless welfare workers told me stories about the people they meet and try to help, every single day. The poor always suffer when times are tough. This year there are ordinary working people plunged into situations of despair by their lack of finances.They can see no end to the circumstances that have overtaken them. 

As I was busy donating some of these goods and gifts to the disadvantaged, I met Ally who works in Yulu-Burri-Ba, Wynnum. She was so grateful for all the things we donated for indigenous families who are struggling here in the Moreton Bay region. Most of these things go to Aboriginal women and children, who have been deserted or abused by their partners and they end up with nowhere safe to go.

There is also a big increase youth homelessness in our particular area. One of the workers told me that some of the youth she has talked to, deliberately resort to reoffending because they get free food and board in youth detention. How tragic! There are also a great many families with single parents, who have kids of all ages, struggling to make ends meet plus they can’t find finances for their next meal – the exhorbatent rent payments, power bills, and the price of fresh food has overwhelmed them.

The cost of these things we regard as essentials has forced many people into homelessness – along with their children. The things that have been donated will go to families who sometimes cannot find food for their next meal …literally. They end up at social welfare weeping in despair and in dire straits because they never expected their lives to go like this. Well, who would? Nobody plans to be homeless!  The hard part for the welfare workers is that in the past few years donations have greatly dropped off – so they have nothing to give them.Hampers of food and simple necessities are a great thing to give. 

On my way home, I went to a men’s shelter to drop off another food and gift package. I met Peter and Brian – two totally different men from different backgrounds and circumstances. These men had no families. They were incredibly grateful for the food and toiletries supplied by our church, they couldn’t wait to shake my hand! These guys were  especially thankful that somebody cares about them, and remembers them.  It was good to be able to remind them that God loves them, in person, in a concrete way.

I also took another huge box of the church’s donations yesterday to a place that helps homeless youth and single parents with kids. These beleaguered people are running away from dangerous domestic situations. I had to call to say I was coming. (You have to call ahead for security reasons). And the supervisor was blown away by the generosity of the church at such a desperate time for so many. We took food, toiletries and gifts. 

These two young women, Renee and Lauren, were so excited to receive things to help and explained some of these broken, battered families go into very bleak settings – with the bare necessities etc. but none of the extras we take for granted. They had to leave their “stuff” behind. Imagine an empty room, with no tree or decorations – no presents and no food. We included some Veggie Tales DVDs and bookmarks and small table decorations. I told them that is such a privilege to help in any way we can..”

Back to me again! Our God-given generosity opens doors for the gospel – hubby talked to a lot of people we would never have met. There is no need for preaching when we love others in ways that they can see and understand – it is time for the church to go outside their doors and love on people who are desperately hurting. Bye  👋🏻